Everything is amazing, nobody is happy...

Amman, Jordan, 06/06/2009, 2:50AM

Ahlan wa sahlan! Welcome to Jordan! You've been up all night on an airplane behind a row of teenage girls who don't know the meaning of the word quiet. The airport taxis are a protectionist racket, the almost-affordable taxi your employer arranged to meet you at the airport hasn't shown, you have the driver's number but the credit on your mobile phone has expired while you were in Hungary, all the kiosks in the airport are closed so you can't purchase more credit, and when you ask at the information counter for assistance, he shrugs and says, That's unfortunate. Welcome to Jordan. Ahlan wa sahlan. Ahlan. Ahlan.

Even as all of this is going through my head, I'm also thinking of this sketch from comedian Louis CK, "Everything is amazing, nobody is happy...":

of Hapsburgs & Hashemites

Budapest, Hungary

As the airport shuttle wended its way around the castle, over the river and through Pest, I wish I'd taken more time to see the city, to just walk around drinking in the sights, maybe playing with my camera a bit. I'll never be a photographer like Jad - let alone Moayad! - if I don't play around a lot. (Of course, that's much easier to bear when you don't have to pay for developing!) I wish I'd taken more time to contemplate and document what I would call the Hapsburg feel of Budapest. I've always said that Vienna is one of my all-time favorite cities, in part for its majestic architecture. Driving through Pest this evening, I almost felt like I was in Vienna again.

I'm finding it harder than expected to go back to Jordan. I really love Europe. I feel so comfortable there, even in a country where I don't speak a word of the language. (I think 'geselem' means 'thank you'....) I've been remembering when I was going back to Jordan after Sma's wedding, and from the Dulles Airport shuttle I saw a woman in a jelbaab and hijab and I thought, I'm going home! Now I look around me in the airport at the muhajjibaat, listening to the patter of Arabic, and I barely feel anything. Perhaps it's just the hour. I've been dreading this midnight flight for days ... maybe weeks! An overnight trans-Atlantic flight is fine. It allows for about 4 hours of sleep; you wake up disoriented, not well-rested, but having rested a little. Tonight I'll be lucky to get 2 hours between now and 5am.

Still, I'm returning to this new block of Beginners classes at Bell, full of new ideas, new strategies, and ready to take on the verb "to be" in new ways!

Get A Room!

Budapest, Hungary

Maybe I've just been living with the Arabs too long, but one thing strikes me every time I go out on the streets of Budapest. There are an awful lot of couples making out in public here! I don't just mean putting an arm around your significant other and giving them a little kiss. I'm talking about serious sucking face, here!

I mean, I'm happy for these people. I love that line in Thornton Wilder's Our Town when the mother says, "People are meant to go through this world in twos." And I remember the moment, in Jordan, when I decided that public displays of affection were an American right I had never fully appreciated, but that I would be taking advantage of as soon as I could get a boyfriend back in the States. (Of course, by the time Carter came along, I wasn't feeling the need to prove my American-ness quite so much, and didn't take advantage of that right quite as thoroughly as I'd thought I would.)

Still, I find myself staring with a sort of incredulous envy. On the one hand, I can't believe they're being quite so shameless in public. On the other, I wish I had someone to be shameless in public with!

I have to say, I can't exactly blame these girls, either. Maybe I've just been surrounded by Arab men for too long, whom I have trouble seeing as attractive given the disrespectful, sexist behavior I've seen so much of in the Jordanian bus stations. Whatever it is, I'm finding Hungarian men quite attractive. Tall, clean-cut, svelte…. It's so nice to be back in Europe!

CELTA-ology

Budapest, Hungary

When I went into the CELTA Training, I had very mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I'd never had much for formal teacher training, and I knew it was hurting my teaching, regardless of how good my instincts might be. On the other hand, I remembered very clearly the education majors we'd tutored in the Writing Center, and was skeptical of just how much new information I'd get. But I've tried to keep an open mind, and keep my experience with Arabic classes at the front of my mind.

In the first year of graduate school, we used a very traditional textbook developed by Eckehart Schultz at the University of Leipzig, heavy on grammar and linguistics, and reading and writing. I loved it, and all my classmates hated it! The second year, we used the ubiquitous Al-Kitaab, which I found unsystematic, even chaotic, and endlessly frustrating. The rest of the class, however, was far happier with the new book's communicative approach of natural language. Upon consideration, it seemed pretty clear that the communicative approach really does work for most students, even if it doesn't work for me ... a good reason to learn how to teach it!

Now, more than half way through the course, I'm really glad I'm here, and I'm much more convinced that, given the kind of clear frameworks CELTA provides, the communicative approach really can work, and is an effective method for engaging and challenging students, as well as giving them skills to help them learn language from their environment. The communicative approach, as we've seen it here, also correlates quite closely with what I learned about inter-language and natural processes of language acquisition through the workshops I organized back in Indiana. While I still believe that the communicative classroom would drive me crazy as a student, as a teacher I'm becoming a convert!

What I'm interested in seeing in next week's sessions is how this can be applied to a beginners' classroom. With Beginner 1 students who only know how to ask and answer six questions, how do you make the classroom more communicative? Can beginners also learn through guided discovery? (I did that yesterday with my students, and it went brilliantly!)

I'm also hoping to have time to see some things this weekend. I've been in Budapest for more than two weeks. Other than one dinner out with Vicky and one trip to buy Kreinik braid at the mall for my cross-stitch project, I've only seen the city from my apartment to the school and back again!

Oy, vey!

Budapest, Hungary

Only a third of the way into my certification course, and all I can think is, "I'm so glad I don't have to teach today!" (Sorry, Sean!) This course is just exhausting! But ultimately I hope this will be a good thing....

Hung(a)ry without Hungarian

Budapest, Hungary

Yesterday I confessed to Carter how uncomfortable I am going to countries where I don't speak the language. "There are still places like that?" he asked.

Today, as I was trying to ask for the check for my goulash, I commented on how I feel like such a stupid American that I can't even ask for the check in Hungarian, and my new roommate assured me that with my German and Arabic, I was hardly a stupid American.

I could learn Hungarian, in between TEFL classes. I could learn just enough words to ask questions I wouldn't understand the answer to, add it to the list of increasingly random languages I know little bits of (Dutch, Kurdish, Swedish Battlestar Galactica subtitles...), and become even more confused. Or I could just spend the next four weeks asking, "English? Deutsch? 3arabi?" At least people will have options!

Not a Terrorist

Budapest, Hungary

When I first spotted him in line in front of me at the Queen Alia Airport in Amman, I was fascinated by his pants, which at first I thought were a pinstripe, Wahhabi-style (i.e. high-water) thobe. Then I realized they were extra-wide pants with an elastic waistband. I couldn't stop scrutinizing them from every angle, because I'd never seen anything like them (and I am my mother's daughter). Then I was struck by his long, Islamic cleric beard (I love how they stick out just like a pharoah's prosthetic) and how it contrasted with the rest of his head, which was shaved to mere millimeters. There was something oddly serene about the guy.

It wasn't until we were in the bus out to the airplane, he speaking in French on his phone with a plastic bag full of jumbo-sized Qur'aan at his feet, that the more ignominious thought crept in: "This is the kind of strikingly devout Muslim Arab we're supposed to be afraid of." And it was like the French philosopher's white horse. (Man could fly if he could just not think of a white horse.) Once the thought was in my head, despite my best intentions and years of getting to know Muslims of all stripes, both the devout and the more casual, I couldn't stop labeling him as a potential threat. He turned out to be sitting across the aisle from me, and every time he opened his Qur'aan or went to the bathroom, I thought, "This is the part in the movie where he turns out to be a terrorist!" Even knowing how ridiculous it was, I couldn't stop an edge of apprehension.

Imagine, then, what it must be like to work for the Transportation and Safety Administration. We spend a lot of time ridiculing and vilifying them for their post-9/11 paranoia, for all the things you have to unpack and take off to go through airport security today, for their alleged racial profiling. And there is something definitively Kafka-esque about the TSA. It's really pretty ludicrous to continue calling it "random selection" when every Arab or Muslim I know gets pulled aside for additional questioning every time they fly! It's our job as democrats and citizens to keep an eye on things, keep things from getting too Orwellian.

Still, if this were your job, day in and day out, to be suspicious of everyone, to be constantly under the pressure of preventing another shoe bomber, another liquid explosives ring, God forbid another hijacking...! If this were your job, wouldn't you be watching that devout young Muslim very carefully? Even with the best of intentions, with every reason to know that the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful people who love their families and their neighbors, I couldn't keep the doubt from creeping in. Imagine if doubting were my daily bread and butter!